How to Talk to Famous People

With a new book, Real Hollywood Stories, in stores now, we talked to Scott Raab about his career annoying the crap out of celebrities.

ESQ: After reading Real Hollywood Stories, you don't seem particularly impressed by famous people. In fact, you seem to openly loathe them. Why?

SR: This might sound like a joke, but part of the answer is that I'm from Cleveland. I'm an old shoe salesman. I'm an old bartender. Those are not metaphors -- those are things I have done for money! I'm not wowed by anyone's station in life. It's the opposite. I'm really interested when people are cut down to size. To me -- and not to harp on the Cleveland thing, but it's a really big part of my personality -- it's a chance to try and get real with someone whose entire existence is an image. How do you get through that?

ESQ: Waitaminute. You sold shoes!

SR: Oh yeah, I spent three-to-four years as a shoe salesman. I like selling, I like showing up, I like trying to talk to people who might not be interested in talking. So I will poke and I will prod and I will push, and I will try to get someone lit up even if they're getting angry at me. My joke used to be, "You could send a monkey with a tape recorder and a list of questions tucked in his ass to go do a celebrity profile." But the truth is there's a certain amount of "fuck it" involved. I can't send someone else so I just say, "Fuck it, I'm just going to have a good time." And I'm going to make them have a good time, no matter what.

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ESQ: Do you think incredibly rich, famous people -- the insulated ones like Michael Jackson and Britney Spears -- are so far removed from how human beings are supposed to behave that they're actually sociopaths?

SR: Actors are the neediest people you're ever going to meet. And their relationship to real life, tenuous though it is because of all the wranglers, the money, everyone throwing everything at them every day of their lives -- I think they're pretty much who they were before. Ray Romano, as far as I know, still rents a house on the Jersey shore every summer. His closest friends are the guys he grew up with in Queens. Robert Downey Jr. is a very down to earth guy in his own way, but he's living on a different planet from most of us. He was living on that planet before he became Robert Downey Jr.

ESQ: How do you get Robert Downey Jr. to discuss his cunnilingus technique? He just kinda offer that one up?

SR: No, it's me. It's me. It is. I get in these conversations and on the vast continuum of human sexuality I tend towards the high testosterone side, which is not a boast. You know, four or five times a night is the most I'm able to go. Look, when you go out there at 300-plus pounds, people actually treat you differently than when you're at 225. Especially actors. So I've got to compensate, I've got to make them laugh. It's really just sales.

ESQ: So you don't advocate the James Lipton approach?

SR: Yeah. I like the James Lipton approach ... to laugh at. I might love an actor's movies, but I'm much more interested in them as a human being. I want the reader to have a good time. And for me to have a good time, the conversation has to start somewhere other than, "What was it like to work with Clint Eastwood on Unforgiven?" With Nic Cage I was curious how a guy went from making odd and interesting choices like Leaving Las Vegas to make three Jerry Bruckheimer movies in a row. Instead of asking that question, I told him I felt Con Air and The Rock were a lot like a porn film.

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ESQ: Boy, that must have gone over well.

SR: He didn't like that at all. But he was stuck with me. I was wedged into his little yellow Ferrari driving down the highway. What's he going to do? He couldn't have kicked me out.

ESQ: Which celebrities wish you were dead?

SR: Paul Newman's brother. He wrote a letter advocating "putting my eyes out" and made a reference to some old Roman custom. I get the feeling the Newmans weren't real happy with that profile. And I heard that Sheryl Crow was devastated. Larry David was kind enough to call me and say that he wasn't totally unhappy with it -- but added that if he ever chose to be profiled again, everything would have been off the record. The writer would have to call to clear each quote. So, I don't think he's ever been profiled again. Maybe he wasn't thrilled with me.

SR: There is nothing easier to do than to do what Ron Rosenbaum did and ask what happened to the celebrity profile. He knows goddamn well what happened to the celebrity profile. I've seen it happen during the time I've spent doing the celebrity profile. I don't have the time or space that I used to have, but I don't even care. That kind of necessity can still lead to, I think, first-rate work. If you want to say it like some kind of cliché, the only thing more tired and worn out than the celebrity profile is guys writing about how worn out and tired celebrity profiles are.

ESQ: If you could ask one question to any celebrity -- and they've taken a magic sodium penathol truth-telling cocktail to ensure they'll answer -- what question do you ask what celebrity?

SR: Let's see. I asked Dennis Rodman what it was like to fuck Madonna. So I got the answer to that one -- he said it was good. I asked Bill Murray what he said to Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation, but he wouldn't tell me. I think I'd like to ask Al Gore, "How the fuck do you still walk the Earth after handing the keys to the White House to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? I don't want to hear about Nader and Florida. You lost Tennessee and West Virginia. How on earth do you not disembowel yourself? Take your fucking Nobel Prize and drop dead."

ESQ: To be fair, he did grow a hideous beard as penance.

SR: Listen, I grew a beard and put on a lot of weight too. But tens of thousands of innocent people didn't wind up dead because I couldn't manage to run a competent presidential campaign. I don't know if that's a good answer to your question. Let me see. I asked Ewan McGregor, who is very well hung, whose was bigger, his or Liam Neeson's. Because Neeson is legendary. He wouldn't answer me. But I'd be interested in that.

ESQ: Cock size. Al Gore. You're an interesting, interesting man.

SR: Oh, for Nic Cage it would be: "When you were balling Lisa Marie, did you ever pretend to be Elvis?"

ESQ: Well, I can certainly see the celebrity publicists lining up now.

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